Gartenkern Magazine

Notes from the garden.

What's new, what's growing, what we're learning. Updates, guides and stories for people who take their garden seriously.

Natural Garden

24 posts

Species-rich flowering meadow in a garden with tall grasses and blooming wildflowers

Natural Garden

From Lawn to Wildflower Meadow: Convert, Don't Start Over

Turn your lawn into a species-rich meadow over two to three years, without any digging. The mowing regime is what decides it.

Ashy mining bee with black and grey hair, a ground nesting wild bee, on sandy ground

Natural Garden

Help Wild Bees Thrive: Nesting Sites, Bare Soil and Forage

Most wild bees nest in the ground, not in a bug hotel; here is how to give them bare soil, a properly built nesting aid and forage from February to October.

Constructed sand bed of open sand in a quarry park, surrounded by wild herbs

Natural Garden

Build a Sandarium: A Nesting Site for Ground-Nesting Wild Bees

How to build a sunny patch of open sand where mining bees and other ground nesters can dig their brood tunnels.

Shallow stone bird bath in a summer garden, surrounded by greenery

Natural Garden

A Water Source for Birds and Insects: Cat-Safe, Clean, Lifesaving

How to set up a water source that carries birds and insects through summer: shallow, cat-safe, with an escape aid and cleaned every day.

A red mason bee at a nesting tube of a bee hotel

Natural Garden

Insect Hotels: What Actually Moves In

Why most insect hotels stay pure decoration, and how the right drill holes and the right material get you a nesting aid that wild bees genuinely move into.

Upright dead hedge of layered branch material between posts in a garden

Natural Garden

How to Build a Deadwood Pile and a Benjes Hedge: Beetle Cellar and a Living Hedge from Dead Wood

A heap of pruning offcuts becomes a deadwood pile for beetles and hedgehogs, or a Benjes hedge that turns green over the years.

A peacock butterfly with open wings feeding on nectar from a violet flower panicle of buddleia.

Natural Garden

Attracting Butterflies: Caterpillar Food and Staggered Nectar

A butterfly bush alone won't do it: how to plan both menus, host plants for the caterpillars and nectar from March through October.

Naturalistic garden pond with a densely planted margin and a shallow marshy zone

Natural Garden

A Garden Pond for Amphibians: Three Zones, a Gentle Slope, No Fish

How to build a natural spring pond where frogs and newts truly settle in: three zones, one gently sloping bank, and deliberately no fish.

Dry stone wall of layered natural stone in a garden, colonised by mat forming perennials

Natural Garden

Build a Dry Stone Wall as a Habitat

Stacked without mortar, a dry stone wall becomes a home for lizards, mason bees and joint-dwelling plants.